Don Pettit during his last trip to space.
Don Pettit is arguably the greatest photographer to ever go to space. A legend of astrophotography, his spectacular images have informed and entertained audiences for decades now. But one Reddit moderator isn’t impressed.
Quite unbelievably, an r/aviation mod had the audacity to remove one of Pettit’s photos on the ground that it was “low quality” and “blurry.” The photo in question? A shot Pettit took while onboard the International Space Station looking down at a commercial airliner some 250 miles below.
It’s a unique angle of an airplane that very few get to see. Pettit, with his creative flair for great pictures, is always looking to exploit the photo opportunities afforded to astronauts onboard the ISS.
The photo Pettit shared to Reddit. It was taken 250 miles above the airplane while Pettit was on the ISS. Apology
As Futurism reports, when a screenshot of the deletion began circulating, members of r/aviation began to express their displeasure at Reddit moderators — who have a reputation for being over-zealous.
“Dear mods, please show NASA how to take better pictures from space so you don’t have to delete them,” writes the user who raised the issue. Another user replied: “Reddit in a nutshell.”
In all fairness, another moderator did step in and issued an apology. “We brought some new people onto the mod team and unfortunately there are some learning curves,” they write. “I caught the issue and fixed it… I’ll speak to the guy who made the mistake and hopefully this won’t happen again.”
The post has since been reinstated and the same moderator apoligized directly to Pettit. “I’d say the quality of the picture is pretty dang good considering that it’s from about 250 miles away,” the mod adds.
Pettit regularly shares his work to Reddit as he trawls through his vast archive of pictures taken during the 590 days total he has spent in space. While admittedly the airplane photo may not be as visually spectacular as an atmospheric distortion of the Moon or orbital star trails mixing with Starlink satellites, it offers a view of the other side of an object most people see every day. The ISS will be decommissioned and de-orbited around 2030, so the photographs that astronauts capture now is precious material.
Image credits: Photographs by NASA / Don Pettit